We’ve been hearing reports that Skype is debuting a mobile video chat service and D-Day has arrived. The company is launching a brand new version of its iPhone app that includes the ability to turn on video in any Skype chat.
The beauty of the app is that it brings free video calling to iPhone 3G devices, iPad and iPod Touch, all of which couldn’t run Apple’s video calling feature Facetime (the feature only works with iPhone 4 devices and Mac computers). Of course, iPad owners.. show all text

All signs have been pointing to this release for a few days now, but we'll admit: we expected Skype to wait until CES next week to pull the covers off what could become its crown jewel service over the coming months. Skype's official iOS client has finally sprouted the ability to make video calls, allowing iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and fourth-generation iPod touch users to share real-time video amongst each other and users of Skype's Windows, Mac, and Linux clients along with the ASUS Videophone (o.. show all text

As many of you have noticed, we (and by “we”, I mainly mean “me”) have been using Quora a lot as a source of inspiration for story ideas. Some people seem to think this is a great idea. Others seem to think it’s the end of TechCrunch, blogging, and the world — perhaps not in that exact order. But here’s what it really is: business as usual.
One reader, Elias Bizannes, tweeted the following yesterday, “Blogging 3.0 according to @parislemon 1) Follo.. show all text

Groupon has filed for a Series G funding round that authorizes it to raise up to $950 million, according to a new report. The new round of funding comes just weeks after the group-buying website rejected a $6 billion acquisition offer from Google.
According to VC Expert, Groupon filed for a certificate to authorize the Series G round last week (an amended certificate of incorporation) and will be filing another document next week outlining the exact amount it intends to raise. We’re worki.. show all text

The Better Profiles Series is supported by Gillette. Learn more about Gillette and its products at Gillette.com.
Just when you thought you had mastered your Facebook account, the company redesigned profile layouts, giving you a lot to think about in terms of what you want to showcase and share with others.
If you’re wondering how to make the most of these changes — and how to modify sections to have a little more control over what is displayed — here are some ways to put your .. show all text

Video footage of the new version of the Google Android music app has leaked, revealing a revamped and colorful user interface.
First posted on XDA Developers and spotted by Engadget, the 50 second footage provides a demonstration of the new features of Android’s default music app.
The updated app is much easy on the eyes that its predecessor. The vibrant colors of the album covers captured our attention, while the elegant transitions and album stacking strike us as being more like the iPh.. show all text

Photo by Scott Bryant
From the first computers and all the way up to the birth of blogging and social networking, technology is a marvel to behold. With every new advancement comes praise—or criticism—not only to the new technology but also to the creative and skilled minds that have worked tirelessly to change the way technology plays a role in society. Sadly, one aspect of technology that doesn’t get the amount attention that it rightly deserves is the brilliant but unsung w.. show all text

RIM had a complete internal panic when Apple unveiled the iPhone in 2007, a former employee revealed this weekend. The BlackBerry maker is now known to have held multiple all-hands meetings on January 10 that year, a day after the iPhone was on stage, and to have made outlandish claims about its features. Apple was effectively accused of lying as it was supposedly impossible that a device could have such a large touchscreen but still get a usable lifespan away from a power outlet….

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Answer: They are too smart for their own good and not smart enough for everyone else’s. Molly Ivins once quipped, “The strongest human emotion is neither love nor hate. It is one person’s desire to f#ck with another person’s copy”
Well we’re not talking Farenheit 451, more like a quarter of that temperature but complaints are heating up.
My experience with Quora has been mostly positive and I believe it serves a useful purpose. Yet the Quora admi.. show all text

Every week, Mashable puts together a calendar of upcoming social media and web events, parties and conferences. Would you like to have your conference or event listed here? If so, please contact us at least one month before your event to establish a media partnership. For more upcoming listings, check out Mashable’s Events section.
In the meantime, here are some tips on how to network, share your information and/or promote your event(s) using social media:
The Future of Event Planning and.. show all text

Amazon this morning announced that on its peak day for this year, November 29, customers ordered more than 13.7 million items worldwide across all product categories, which translates to a – self-proclaimed – record-breaking 158 items per second.
November 29 was, of course, Cyber Monday in the United States, the Monday immediately following Black Friday.
According to comScore, overall online spending in the United States surpassed $1 billion on Cyber Monday in 2010, up 16 percent ve.. show all text

[Download printable version here etc.]
This is my latest cartoon from the series I’m doing for Rackspace.
One thing that Rackspace is very proud of is their customer base. Both in terms of quality and quantity. Not only do they have some really wicked customers, they have lots of them.
And no, I’m not just being nice because they’re my client. Some of them ARE awesome. A lot of amazing companies that you’ve heard of and admire.
So… what’s wrong with wanting .. show all text

I wrote a post a little while ago about How-to use the HD-PVR with Windows Media Center. A lot of people, including me, have experienced slow channel changes with the internal HD-PVR IR blaster. One of the options with the native Hauppauge drivers is to use an external IR blaster. We’ve been using the IR Server Suite which is very powerful but the documentation is a little thin. Especially since it was designed initially for other software. Below are the steps I went through to get it set up on my system. Hopefully it will help others.

Before you get started, If you also have a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1850 or WinTV-HVR-2250 installed, use the Hauppauge Windows Media Center remote control receiver/blaster configuration utility (Hcwcirconfig_tool_1.2.28165.exe) to enable or disable the built-in IR receiver/blaster hardware. Download it from the Hauppauge Support site (Accessories tab).

In a proactive public relations move, AT&T is taking the lead on texting-and-driving prevention with an 11-minute documentary on the topic, intended to reach consumers before New Year’s Eve.
The doc, called The Last Text, features stories about people whose lives were adversely affected by texting behind the wheel, including the parents of Mariah West, who died after texting “Where u at?” to a friend.
AT&T is distributing the film to schools, safety organizations and g.. show all text

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has signed a government order that lays out the groundwork for the transition of federal bodies and agencies to use free software, including Linux, by 2015.
The 25-point document (available here) outlines specific steps the government must take in order to move off proprietary software and onto free and/or open source alternatives like Linux. The government order was approved on December 17 and affects all federal agencies of the federal budget.
Each point .. show all text

Are you on Foursquare, Gowalla or any other check-in services? I use Foursquare and like many of my friends, I’m beginning to wonder “What’s the point?” So far, they’re great in theory, but not in practice. Gowalla boasts that you’ll “find inspiration to explore the world around you while picking up rewards from local eateries, venues, and retail stores.” Similarly, Foursquare says that it’s “a mobile application that makes cities easi.. show all text

It's a big, big world out there. My way of doings things will not be your way of doing things.
You should be comfortable with that. I am. I don't really see it as "my way" versus someone else's. I see it more like The Matrix. I loved that movie (mostly the first one, but all three are much more bearable when watching them in one sitting). Beyond the special effects and subtext, there is something that much deeper happening in the movie. While I don't believe that we spend our days liv.. show all text

As a class, developers have had a fantastic year in 2010.
We’ve made headlines, grabbed the limelight, been vilified and glorified beyond all reason and gotten paid pretty nicely along the way. And the bubble of consumer web apps just continues to swell, so there are no signs (yet) that 2011 will bring anything short of grandeur for the web and mobile development communities.
Looking ahead to what the coming year might hold, there are a few sure bets and a few speculations we’d like.. show all text

Today is the third anniversary of the day when I quit smoking!
Quitting smoking, like most other addictions, is an intensely private and personal thing. You know when you are ready to quit. It isn’t the doctors, or friends, or family who can get you to quit. It is you — the smoker, the alcoholic, workaholic or a drug user — who has to make that decision. And after you have made that decision, then it is a battle to fight the urge to smoke again. My last cigarette was minutes b.. show all text

It’s beginning to look like Apple may have had a very, very merry Christmas. Not that it should surprise anyone given how many of their products were on year-end “best-of” lists. But some data that has started to come in over the past few days points to Apple’s Christmas surge once again being led by the mainstays: the iPhone and iPod touch (and probably the iPad as well).
Since yesterday, developers have been tweeting and messaging about huge spikes in downloads of thei.. show all text

What's the fastest way to evaluate the true behavior of a Senator or Representative in Congress? How about through a ready-made mathematical model and some charts? That's what Josh Tauberer has created as the latest project at congress-tracking site GovTrack.us. (Numerical methods for determining leadership and ideology in Congress)
"Bulk access to legislative information makes large-scale statistical analyses possible," Tauberer writes. He's performed analyses he says are like Google.. show all text

Amazon this morning announced that on its peak day for this year, November 29, customers ordered more than 13.7 million items worldwide across all product categories, which translates to a – self-proclaimed – record-breaking 158 items per second.
November 29 was, of course, Cyber Monday in the United States, the Monday immediately following Black Friday.
According to comScore, overall online spending in the United States surpassed $1 billion on Cyber Monday in 2010, up 16 percent ve.. show all text

Editor’s Note: The following guest post is written by a Silicon Valley CEO. Frank Dupree is a pen name
In the late 1990s, the rise of the browser was supposed to usher in an era of unprecedented opportunity for startups. A great part of that increased opportunity came as a result of the significant reduction in platform dependencies. No longer did the users’ operating system dictate their access to services or information. Even a behemoth like Microsoft was fighting hand-to-hand com.. show all text

Lots of people use these days as throwaway days. Don’t. The time between now and the new year is a PERFECT time to get bigger things launched. Everyone else has let up on the pressure. The outside world is taking a breath. Do some stealth stuff. Do some bigger launch stuff. Work on some bigger-than-the-average-day stuff. Don’t phone it in.
Work now while they’re coasting.
Yes, see your family. Yes, take measure of where you’ve been. Yes, do everything in your power to re.. show all text

Back in June, we reported on the departure of Kellan Elliott-McCrea from Yahoo. While not hugely known outside the developer community, we had received several tips indicating just how important Elliott-McCrea was to the Flickr team, where his role as “Architect” was supposedly “vital” to the service. So who better to answer questions about Flickr than Elliott-McCrea (who is now the VP of Engineering for Etsy), right? And that’s exactly what he’s done on Quor.. show all text

Taken a look at Google's homepage recently? If not, we'd recommend you do so, STAT. The image you see here will only be an active doodle — a name given to Google's "special" logos used to commemorate certain events and holidays — for a few more hours. According to a lengthy report over at the Wall Street Journal, the Holiday 2010 Doodle is El Goog's "most ambitious one yet," taking five artists some 250 hours to create. Google estimates that it has crafted some 900 doodles.. show all text

Why does it almost always seem like you're in the slow line at the grocery store or in the driving lane with the most cars on the freeway? Bill "Engineer Guy" Hammack explains in terms of queuing theory in the video below:
Bill reveals how "queueing theory" – developed by engineers to route phone calls – can be used to find the most efficient arrangement of cashiers and check out lines. He reports on the work of Agner Erlang, a Danish engineer who, at the opening of the 20th.. show all text

(Photo: Garland Cannon)
It was just past 5pm EST in Manhattan, and I’d been on pins and needles all day.
The report was coming in any minute. All attempts to nap earlier, despite two hours of sleep, had failed. There would be no rest on this Wednesday.
Now, in the lobby of the ACE Hotel, a few friends — including my agent, Steve Hanselman, my assistant, Charlie Hoehn, and my brother from another mother, Chris — had gathered with me to drink champagne. No matter the outcome, it.. show all text

Delta Air Lines has pre-emptively canceled approximately 500 Christmas Day flights, a company spokesman said, as it and other U.S. airlines work to get ahead of a storm that's threatening the East Coast.

We’ve seen this one coming all year. Facebook is now the third largest website in the world, taking the No. 3 spot from Yahoo, according to comScore. Facebook drew an estimated 648 million unique visitors from across the globe in November, 2010, compared to 630 million for Yahoo. In October the two sites were dead even with 633 million worldwide unique visitors each (actually Facebook had already passed Yahoo by a smidgeon in October with about half a million more visitors). The only two .. show all text

Back in October, after the official launch of Windows Phone 7, I wrote up some initial thoughts after having played with a few prototype devices in the months leading up to the launch. Many seemed surprised by my mostly positive reactions. It seemed to me at the time that Microsoft may have actually brought a gun to a gun fight with Windows Phone — as opposed to a sword, or a knife, or a mop.
At the same time, I noted, “Now they just have to run a marathon. Up a mountain. Against co.. show all text

Does a ski trip to Aspen make you a successful bond trader, or do successful bond traders go skiing in Aspen?
It's college acceptance season, and worth considering an often overlooked question:
Do people who are on track to become successful go to elite colleges, buy elite cars, engage in other elite behaviors… (Defining elite as something both scarce and thus expensive).
or
Do attending these colleges or engaging in these behaviors make you successful?
It matters, because if you're buying th.. show all text

Twitter is useful, imho, for two things:
1. As a way to share links.
2. As a way to speak your mind.
These days I use it almost exclusively for #1. Very little of #2.
People just aren't that interested in what other people think. And it's damned difficult to speak your mind 140 characters at a time. Most of the time you can anticipate in advance what the misunderstandings will be, and self-edit. Then self-censor. Why bother going through all that michegas.
But as a link-sharing tool, it is real.. show all text

The following is a guest post by David Dalka. Dalka is a digital business strategist and keynote speaker who was a member of BlackRock (BLK) during its hyper-growth phase of 80 to 800 people. He is a top ten contributor to CrunchBase, strategist to senior executives on how digital marketing tactics are transforming business strategy and revenue generation, blogger and is currently working on a nonfiction business book proposal. According to TechCrunch Editor Michael Arrington, Dalka currently l.. show all text

I left Yahoo over two years ago, but prior to that I spent three years running product for Delicious. Since then I’ve remained a loyal user and supporter. To this day I keep in touch with former Delicious colleagues and consider many to be friends. And though I’ve felt that Delicious has been frustratingly slow to evolve in recent years, I’ve always wished the best for the product and the remaining team members. original photo: afagen on Flickr All of this.. show all text

Editor’s note: Guest author John Borthwick is the CEO and founder of betaworks and in a previous life was a senior strategist for Time Warner and a witness in the Microsoft antitrust case.
Access to fast, affordable and open broadband, for users and developers alike is, I believe, the single most important driver of innovation in our business. The FCC will likely vote next week on a framework for net neutrality—we got aspects of this wrong ten years ago, we can’t afford t.. show all text

Tonight after work I went to Starbucks with the CarWoo team. They are building a better way to buy a car. Got funded to the tune of $6 million. Are one of Paul Graham’s favorite Y Combinator companies. He’s been telling people he thinks they have potential to go public. Why? Because they are “crushing it” as they help car buyers have a better experience. I liked them so much I spent 40 minutes talking with the co-founders about their new service and how they are changing.. show all text

Yesterday we selected our Best LittleCo of 2010, the light blogging service Tumblr. In this post we select a company that we think has the potential to be Best LittleCo of 2011. Next year we're expecting a lot from data-centric companies and one in particular. This company provides a platform for developers to create location-aware applications: SimpleGeo.
This is the 7th year that we've chosen a Most Promising company. Looking back at our results, we've hit the mark sometimes: Feedburner in 20.. show all text

My recent predictions about which Google products will succeed (and which won't) are causing people to think that I'm anti-Google, which makes me sad since Google is probably still the best company of its size, and I really enjoyed my time there. Unfortunately, positive stories are never as popular as negative ones, but regardless, it's worth highlighting some of the things that continue to differentiate Google as one of the best companies in tech. 1 – They take big risks. People ofte.. show all text

Jesse Thomas is the CEO and Founder of JESS3, a Creative Interactive Agency. JESS3 designs products and experiences for brands like Google, Nike, Facebook, MySpace, C-SPAN, Microsoft and NASA.
“Likes,” views and followers were all the rage in 2010. Despite the social media community emphasizing engagement instead of reach, media agencies quickly learned that engagement doesn’t scale easily, making it difficult to sell. Enter Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. As consumer use of so.. show all text

There are now three times as many people on the Twitter team as there were at this time last year. More than half of our employees work in engineering and operations, and those teams continue to grow as we attract more and more talented people interested in the challenges of building a global information network. Today, we’re adding four engineers and one designer through our acquisition of the team at Fluther, Inc. During our conversations with Fluther's team, we were continually impres.. show all text

The net neutrality rule, which will be voted in during tomorrow's FCC meeting, falls drastically short of earlier pledges by President Obama and the FCC Chairman to protect the free and open Internet. Read More… More on Net Neutrality

Personal profile startup About.me launched publicly, oh, all of four days ago. And, boom. Today AOL (our parent company), will announce that they’ve acquired the company. It will become part of the consumer applications group, led by AOL exec Brad Garlinghouse.
Making About.Me a sister company to TechCrunch.
Frankly I’m a little surprised by the acquisition. Not because About.me isn’t a potentially fascinating product. They had 400,000 people sign up for the service during th.. show all text